Fresh Start
by WolfUnderTheMoon
Summary: The man who goes jellykneed in danger...who could it be? Given a new new start in magical advertising...this man could take the world by storm again! If only the vending machine hadn't run out of chocolate biscuits...


Fresh Start 

Severe fluorescent spotlights rise on a man holding a very clearly-labelled blue glass bottle of Truth Ink. The man grins hugely, shaking his long, wavy blonde hair in a Prince Charming-esque manner as the spotlight reaches his face. He proudly holds aloft the small bottle of ink and a huge, hideous peacock-feather quill pen.

We then realise that this man is none other than Gilderoy Lockhart, he who goes jelly-kneed in danger, newly released from his private side room on the fourth floor of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. He has recently been given a job in magical advertising by long-time fan and owner of the company, Gladys Gudgeon.

Lockhart leans his right elbow against the top of a nearby chair, shakes his hair out of his eyes again, and speaks. Whilst still managing to show every single one of his dazzlingly white teeth.

"I'm here to tell you about new Cillit Bang. Bang! And the dirt is gone!"

Lockhart appears momentarily bemused, looks hawkishly at the small bottle in his hand, then at the quill, knitting his perfectly tweezed brows in concentration. As usual, he drops a stitch. Finally, he looks over to two people off the view of the camera. A man and a woman are having a brief whispered argument. The man shakes his head, rolls his eyes in exasperation, and stomps off to get a coffee and some heavy-duty paracetamol. Gilderoy walks over to the woman, who whispers instructions to him, and, when he continues to look confused, repeats them again, slightly faster. After all, the adverts are being broadcast live.

Gilderoy nods a few times, pretending he actually does understand, and winks a bright blue eye at her. She melts into blushes and embarrassed giggles, and has to rush off for a quick cold shower.

Lockhart leans towards the nearest camera, glances either side of him a couple of times, as if to check for eavesdroppers, and whispers conspiratorially to the camera man. "It's all down to my stunning good looks, you know."

The camera man looks revolted and shuffles backwards a few steps. The woman who just giggled is, possibly was, his girlfriend.

Lockhart springs back into position.

Cameras focus back on him.

"I'm really here to tell you about the new, all-improved Truth Ink, developed at MagiCo laboratories just for you! We absolutely promise that all traces of dragon shi…manure have now been removed from the ink before production!"

"Watch in amazement as new Truth Ink corrects even the most hideously wrong sentences!" Lockhart bends over, writing on a shocking pink piece of parchment lying on a table next to the chair he had been leaning on. He waggles his butt in his much-too-tight spandex leggings, whilst humming to himself, "I see you baby, shaking that ass, shaking that ass, shaking that ass…"

He stands upright and turns round again, triumphantly holding up the sheet of parchment, filled with enormous, loopy, just-joined-together writing, and the ink-stained quill. The paper reads:

'Roonil Wazlib is brave in the face of danger.'

The letters blur for a moment, then resolve themselves, with a flash of blue light, into:

'Ronald Weasley is gormless in the face of danger.' This is written in cramped, spiky handwriting.

The crowd gasp in over-the-top amazement.

Lockhart now grins to the extent that the camera crew are near-blinded. The nearest cameraman, who is now considering smearing Lockhart's pretty nose all over his pretty face on behalf of his bruised ego, mutters, "I can feel compensation setting in…"

"So, you lucky, lucky people, there you have it. Realistic proof that this product really does truthfully work. Oh, and to any especially lucky ladies out there, I'm staying at the Barrington Hotel in London, room number 291."

Lockhart winks again, and a small sparkle gleams off one of his teeth as the lights go down and the cameras are turned off.

The cheesy grin fades. He pulls out a bright pink mobile phone (in touch with his even-more-feminine side) and presses the speed dial button for his agent. "Hi, Ricky? Yeah, hi babe, yeah, it's me, Locky. Get me another hotel room for tonight, ok? Anywhere. Otherwise," he shudders, "I'm going to be knee deep in bras pushed under my door by the end of tonight, and you know how I hate that." Ricky, who has been listening to all this with fatalistic premonition, asks one question. "But why didn't you just lie to them? Tell them you were staying somewhere else?"

Lockhart draws himself up to his full height. "Gilderoy Lockhart never lies! Never! He may be economic with the truth at times, but he never lies!"

Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, Ricky mutters, "Tell that to your publishers…"

There is a long pause whilst Ricky rings up all the hotels, and, with increasing desperation, all the B&Bs in London, looking for an empty room.

Lockhart inspects his perfectly-manicured nails, and stamps his foot in petulant annoyance as he sees a slight scratch in the clear enamel on the fingernail of his left pinkie. Beckoning imperiously to his personal nail artist, he holds out his hand while she tends to the enamel with a tiny brush and a few well chosen spells.

Ricky comes back on the phone line. "Honey, I'm sorry, but I've checked every London hotel, and there just isn't anywhere. Apparently there's some concert or something on in Hyde Park tonight."

In fact, Ricky is going to the show, and was itching to get off the telephone and finish work for the night. He wasn't going to miss the Punch and Judy where Punch finishes his intensive anger management classes for anything. Especially not for 'Locky' – the man was a cheese grater on what Ricky liked to think of as his soul.

"Well! What a lot of use you are…not!" The sarcastic response stings Ricky, who bursts into wailing sobs on the other end. "You…you…ooh, you're just so unfeeling! You…" Lockhart hangs up. He is, in his mind, facing the prospect of a roomful of rabid fangirls when he gets back with some dread.

Waving his hands in the air, a tiny dribble of enamel running down his tenderly moisturised hand, and his nail artist scurrying after him, Lockhart proceeds to his personal changing room. He slams the gold-starred door in his nail artist's face, crosses to his lilac chaise longue, and flops down theatrically on it, lounging one arm along its back. He mutters to himself. "Knew I should have gone back to book-signings…he's certainly not getting a joined-up-handwriting autograph…there were lights around that mirror this morning…"

A magically enhanced tannoy blares out through the studio. The voice is that of a rather stressed Gladys Gudgeon, who has realised that, while Lockhart was in hospital, that in writing to him, she spent an awful lot of money on parchment and ink on a man she had never met. She has now met him, and isn't quite so impressed as she thought she would be, especially as he is the only man she knows who sulks when the vending machine has run out of chocolate biscuits.

"I want everyone out of here by 8 o'clock, we're filming 'The Doctors of Azkaban' and we need to change the scenery first."

A weary voice from the chaise longue calls, "Tell me the time, clock."

The heart-shaped clock on the wall burbles with excitement and happiness at being addressed. "Sure thing, honey. I just want to make your life better and better and better and..."

"Time, clock."

"Oh yeah…it lacks but five minutes to the hour of eight, sweetheart."

Five to eight.

Buggar.

He was going to have to go back to…he shuddered…his hotel room…

Meanwhile

Back at room 291 of the Barrington, a solitary figure stands nervously outside. She knocks tentatively on the lacquered door, clutching a sheet of parchment and a quill, not knowing that Lockhart was in fact fuming back at the studio.

"Mr. Lockhart? Um, my granny wanted an autograph…"

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End file.
